Such was the state of things when the preachers of indulgences, whom Leo X. had encouraged, in order to raise money for St. Peter's Church, arrived in the country round the Elbe. They had already spread over Germany, Switzerland, and France. Their luxury and extravagance were only equalled by their presumption and insolence. All sorts of crime were pardoned by these people for money. Among the most remarkable of these religious swindlers and peddlers was Tetzel. He was a friar of the Dominicans, apostolical commissioner, inquisitor, and bachelor of theology. He united profligate morals with great pretensions to sanctity; was somewhat eloquent, so far as a sonorous voice was concerned, and was very bold and haughty, as vulgar men, raised to eminence and power, are apt to be. But his peculiarity consisted in the audacity of his pretensions, and his readiness in inventing stories to please the people, ever captivated by rhetoric and anecdote. "Indulgences," said he, "are the most precious and sublime of God's gifts." "I would not exchange my privileges for those of St. Peter in heaven; for I have saved more souls, with my indulgences, than he, with his sermons." "There is no sin so great that the indulgence cannot remit it: even repentance is not necessary: indulgences save not the living alone,--they save the dead." "The very moment that the money clinks against the bottom of this chest, the soul escapes from purgatory, and flies to heaven." "And do you know why our Lord distributes so rich a grace? The dilapidated Church of St. Peter and St. Paul is to be restored, which contains the bodies of those holy apostles, and which are now trodden, dishonored, and polluted." [Sidenote: The Ninety-Five Propositions.] Tetzel found but few sufficiently enlightened to resist him, and he obtained great sums from the credulous people. This abomination excited Luther's intensest detestation; and he accordingly wrote ninety-five propositions, and nailed them, in 1517, to the gates of the church, in which he denounced the traffic in indulgences, and traced the doctrine of absolution to the usurped power of the pope. He denied the value of his absolution, and maintained that the divine favor would only be granted on the condition of repentance and faith. In these celebrated propositions, he struck at the root of scholastic absurdities, and also of papal pretensions. The spirit which they breathed was bold, intrepid, and magnanimous. They electrified Germany, and gave a shock to the whole papal edifice. They had both a religious and a political bearing; religious, in reference to the grounds of justification, and political, in opening men's eyes to the unjust and ruinous extortions of Rome.